Night of Champions

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Current revision as of 18:43, 20 July 2011

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Vengeance is a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by Promotion IWE. The inaugural event took place on December 9, 2001 and replaced IWE Armageddon for that year due to the possible insensitivity of the latter's name with respect to the September 11 attacks. The 2002 event featured the Raw and SmackDown! brands. The event was made exclusive to the SmackDown! brand in 2003 and in 2004 was made exclusive to the Raw brand. In 2007, following WrestleMania, all PPV events became tri-branded. Vengeance took over IWF Fully Loaded's scheduled date in July 2002 and later moved to June in 2005, switching schedules with The Great American Bash. The 2007 event was promoted as Vengeance: Night of Champions and featured all IWE titles being defended. In 2008, the event dropped the Vengeance name and continued to promote as Night of Champions, later moving to September in 2010. In 2011, IWE scheduled both a Night of Champions and Vengeance event where the latter name would replace Bragging Rights for October while Night of Champions would retain its original slot.

History

Night of Champions is a pay-per-view (PPV) event consisting of a main event and undercard that feature championship matches and other various matches. Night of Champions was originally known as Vengeance from 2001 until 2006 and Vengeance: Night of Champions in 2007. The first Vengeance was produced as a pay-per-view event for the International Wrestling Federation (IWF), the former name of IWE. The inaugural event took place on December 9, 2001 at the San Diego Sports Arena in San Diego, California and aired live on PPV. In 2002, IWF was court ordered to change their name, which resulted in the promotion changing its name to IWE. Earlier in the year, IWF held a draft that split its roster into two distinctive brands of wrestling, Meltdown and Fusion, and the XCW brand was added in 2006. Before the draft, matches featured wrestlers from the roster without any limitations; after the draft, matches only consisted of wrestlers from their distinctive brands. The first Vengeance event to be produced under the IWE banner and with roster limitations wasVengeance (2002), which took place on July 21, 2002. The following year, IWE announced that PPV events, excluding WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and the Royal Rumble, would be made exclusive to each brand; Vengeance was made exclusive to the Fusion! brand in 2003 and in 2004 was made exclusive to the Meltdown brand. After three years of being produced as a brand exclusive event, Vengeance (2006) was the final Vengeance event that was brand exclusive, as IWE announced that PPV events from April 2007 onwards would feature all three brands of IWE.&nbsp Each Vengeance/Night of Champions event has been held in an indoor arena, with all nine events taking place in the United States.